Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sure enough, it wasn’t long before the wind outside the truck became one continuous roar.

Snowflakes were whipped into icy pellets that battered against our vehicles, and the road ahead was visibly being buried beneath layer after layer of white.

We were forced to slow down more and more. The road was still passable, but visibility was getting worse by the second.

During our time in the Northeast, we’d been through a few heavy snowfalls, but none had ever come down this hard or this fast.

Dong’an Forestry Farm was remote to begin with, and for the latter half of the route, snow clearing was nowhere near timely enough.

By noon, our convoy could barely inch forward.

Around then, the terrain around us started to slope downward. The farmland on both sides of the road had disappeared, leaving only scattered dead trees weighed down by snow. The whole place looked desolate.

By my reckoning, we had probably reached the Wild Ditch Grandpa Wang had mentioned.

Maybe it was the surroundings getting to me, but I suddenly felt unbearably restless.

I tried lowering the window a crack to get some air.

A blast of freezing wind poured in with a sharp, whistling scream-

I hurriedly rolled the window back up, but in that instant, I could have sworn a deathly pale hand swept past my window at the edge of my vision!

I whipped my head around, but there was nothing there.

The wind outside abruptly grew louder.

The howling that had already been raging became harsher and more frantic-

Coarse grains of snow and dirt were swept into the air, scraping hard across the windshield and leaving streaks of white behind.

Heaven and earth turned a ghastly white all at once. It was almost impossible to tell whether the snow in front of us had been blown up by the wind or was freshly falling from the sky.

The windshield wipers were useless by then. If I hadn’t retracted them in time, the wind probably would have snapped them clean off.

Our line of sight was almost completely blocked. Mao Hu had been driving ahead of me the whole time, but now I couldn’t even see his taillights.

Xu Song’s urgent voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. “We can’t keep driving. Stop. Everyone stop-”

In the blink of an eye, the shrieking blizzard swallowed us like some kind of demon.

Cold air hissed through every gap where the wind could get in. The heater in the truck was basically useless now, and at this rate, it was only a matter of time before the engine died completely.

I put on every piece of clothing I could and filled a hot water bag with boiling water, then tucked it against my chest.

At a time like this, hypothermia was what you feared most.

Luckily, we were huddled inside the cab, so we could still hold out for a while.

At first, we’d hoped that if we endured the snow for a bit, this damn whiteout would pass.

But as the minutes ticked by, the storm showed no sign of letting up.

“My damn engine’s stalled-” Mao Hu’s voice came over the walkie-talkie.

“Then what do we do? How about we get out and look around, see if there’s anyone living nearby?” Wu Da shouted at the top of his lungs.

“No!”

Xu Song cut him off immediately. “I’ve already called the station for rescue! Everyone stay in your vehicles and don’t move.”

“What a load of crap. Even our big trucks got trapped out here. Who the hell is going to come save us? By the time the town’s snowplows get here, we’ll all be frozen popsicles!”

“Grandpa Wang said he’d contact people nearby for us. Mountain folk have their own ways. Just sit tight!”

Xu Song’s voice was trembling by then, and he had no patience left for Wu Da at all.

Wu Da kept cursing on his end, sounding like he was dead set on getting out.

I glanced out the window, picked up the walkie-talkie, and said, “Take a good look outside. Visibility is less than a meter, and the snow’s already deep enough to cover our calves. If we go out there, we won’t even be able to tell north from south. Where exactly are we supposed to find anyone?”

By then, the walkie-talkie signal had also gotten pretty bad. I had no idea whether Wu Da heard me or not, but in any case, no sound came from his side for a long while after that.